Ahead of the train lay Angola, with its small wooden depot, and just beyond that a bridge—a plain wood-and-concrete truss span—over Big Sister Creek. Only 21/2 years earlier, this bridge had borne the funeral train of Abraham Lincoln as it traveled a stunned, war-weary nation on its way toward the slain president’s burial place in Illinois.

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Now, Newton, standing at the window of his Angola telegraph office, watched the express as it steamed through the village, 2 hours and 45 minutes behind schedule. It was moving at about 28 miles per hour, Newton later testified—well within a typical range of speed.

On his routine rounds, Conductor Frank Sherman worked his way through the end car of the express. Sherman, a Buffalo resident, would later recall seeing Stewart, the railroad president, sitting in his usual spot in the last seat of the train.

At 3:11 p.m., Sherman opened the door of the end car, stepped through it and began making his way forward through the second-to-last car. At the same time, Dr. Frederick F. Hoyer, a country physician, walked from the second-to-last car into the one in front of it, a move that most likely saved his life.

Also at 3:11, Benjamin Betts felt the first sensations of something amiss—a “trembling motion,” then “a relief, as if a connection had been broken.” There was a terrific jarring sensation, prompting Betts to bolt from his seat. As he did, a shrill whistle rang out as Sherman gave the signal for “down brakes.”

But it was too late. The last two cars of the Lake Shore Express had begun to topple, helplessly, from the railroad tracks.

The cause of the Angola Horror was simple, and deadly. As the express chugged toward the bridge, it ran over a “frog” in the track located 606 feet past the depot building. One of the wheels on the end car, possibly a wheel with a flaw or defect, hit the frog—the crossing point of two rails, a normal part of a switch in the tracks—in such a way that it jarred the wheel loose, causing it to vibrate back and forth. This friction, rail officials later noted, damaged a span of track between the depot and bridge.

Still, all might have been well—the accident possibly averted—if the train’s vibrating, off-center wheels had not hit a metal spike 21 feet past the frog, which threw the end car further off balance. The train sheared the head off the spike, chief engineer of the Buffalo and Erie Railroad Peter Emslie later testified, and at that moment the fate of the express’ end car was sealed. It jumped the tracks.

Once the end car derailed, it began to rock back and forth, slowly and then more quickly—a wobbly, lurching movement that sent the passengers into a panic. They tried to run toward the front of the train, but the rocking motion made it difficult. People were thrown around like rag dolls; some were trampled, others smothered.

The end car also began to pull heavily on the train. As the Lake Shore Express steamed over the Big Sister bridge, the end car uncoupled from the train. It felt like something popping loose, passengers remembered, after the jarring of the derailment. Once free of the train, the car plummeted down into the creek, flipping over several times before coming to a shuddering stop on the icy gorge floor.

Meanwhile, the second-to-last car, pulled off balance, continued to hold the track for a few more moments. It managed to shakily cross the 160-foot-long railroad bridge; then it began—just barely—to climb the opposite embankment.

But the motion of the end car’s uncoupling proved to be too much. The second-to-last car came off the tracks and tipped over, and then rolled and tumbled back down the embankment, into the gorge. Passengers were thrown about like twigs, and most were injured—many severely. Robert M. Russell, a Civil War veteran from Tennessee, who had served in the Confederate army under General Nathan Bedford Forrest, was battered so badly that it wasn’t clear whether he would live or die; he survived.

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